Heating of the Upper Atmosphere of the Planet by Solar UV Radiation, Chemical and Photochemical Reactions

Abstract—An approach that correctly takes into account the contribution of aeronomic reactions due to the direct absorption of hard solar radiation to the energy balance of relatively dense regions of planetary atmospheres is presented. For this, we used a system of generalized Boltzmann kinetic equations for multicomponent mixtures of atomic and molecular gases of moderate density, taking into account radiation and chemical reactions in the collision integrals. This approach made it possible to refine the estimates of the heating function in the energy balance equation of the lower thermosphere and mesosphere in the upper atmosphere of the Earth.